Microsoft announced June 2017’s Games with Gold line up and I find myself not surprised in the least to see the list is a mixture of old, bland and/or largely unappealing games.

First up on Xbox One is Speedrunners, a competitive multiplayer side scrolling elimination/racing game. For those that can’t make sense of that or who want to see it in action here is a video from the LetsPlay Youtube channel about the game.

In my opinion, while the game looks novel I don’t see it as something I would enjoy for long at all.

The Xbox 360 opening offer is Assassin’s Creed 3.

While I deeply enjoyed Assassin’s Creed 2 and AC2: Brotherhood I fell off the series with AC3. I played it not long after release and within two hours turned the game off and returned it to the RedBox kiosk I picked it up from. I disliked it so much I’ve never been able to return to the series.

Both those games are available starting June 1st, Speedrunners being available the 1st through the 30th and AC3 the 1st through the 15th.

After those disappointing titles we see Microsoft up the ante (or lower the bar I guess) with Watchdogs arriving on Xbox One from June 16th through July 15th. Another game I tried out near its initial release and hated within a few hours, I find this one to be one of the worst freebies MS has ever handed out. The game is all kinds of bland and bad and I for one won’t be downloading it.

Lastly the end of the month Xbox 360 offering is a game I actually enjoyed quite a bit when it came out…way back in 2009. That’s right, I loved this game 8 freaking years ago and as much as I enjoyed it and like that it is now backwards compatible, I don’t think it is a wise decision for one of the much ballyhooed Games with Gold service. The game was really good for its time but I don’t think it has aged well enough at all to be appealing to those who have yet to play it. Hell I still own my copy so if I wanted to fire it up I could walk across the room and pick it off my shelf. I don’t know who this freebie serves or why it was decided that it would be an appropriate offering.

Maybe I’m alone but I feel that this program should be a reward for shelling out the quarterly or yearly chunk of cash to the MS overlords and not simply an afterthought like it so often feels. I feel that on a regular basis Sony tops Microsoft in the quality of the monthly freebies, often giving away far superior titles even when the title is an unknown quantity. I am of the opinion that Rocket League wouldn’t be nearly as popular today if it hadn’t been given away to PS Plus members long ago and word of mouth praise spread. Maybe Speedrunners will be a title like Rocket League, it’s anyone’s guess but I am quite honestly tired of being disappointed with the quality of these supplementary titles.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been some quality games released through this program but they feel few and far between.